PCACT

I ran unopposed and won the position of Putnam City Association of Classroom Teachers.  I did get some negative remarks handwritten on two of the ballets, something like, “Anyone but Tex.”  I was excited.  

You see, at this point, I really believed that the administration was the enemy, that they were there to keep teachers cowed down, afraid for their job, and willing to work for low wages and to put in whatever hours and extra duty the principals wanted from them.  The yahoos sitting across from the teachers at the negotiating table were arrogant, ill-mannered, insolent and contemptuous.  They treated us like we were too stupid to understand the complexities of running a school district, they acted like we were children they were forced to babysit until mother would show up and take us off to the nursery.

I was not longer the ignorant and frightened teacher facing Don Hoover and the school board.  I was more prepared.  I understood the role of contract negotiations and that we had a right to ask probing questions, to check their answers, to demand rights and protections for the membership, that we were advocates for the classroom teachers.

One of the proposals was to take Elementary Teachers off the playground.  The teacher complaint was that they did not have enough time to prepare for their classes and to grade papers.  The teachers told us that standing out in a fierce, icy Oklahoma wind drained their energies, and they returned with the children rushed to get their other duties done, hair blown, often their clothing would be wet, and they were just frayed by the outside duty.  Our suggestion was that the teacher aids do the outside duty.

The board position was no, and their reason for saying no was because they said so.  They gave us no rationale other than to say it was just not acceptable to the board.

That seemed to be the general approach the board had on every proposal coming from the teacher’s association.

***

I had numerous experiences coping with teacher problems.

One day a frail lady in her fifties showed up at the PCACT offices.  I’ll caller Bess Myerson.  Bess was about 5 feet tall and she looked like she was all bones one balanced on top of the one below.  A breeze looked like it could topple her like a Jenga tower on a card table.  

Bess explained to me that she had been forced to resign three years and one week ago.  It turns out that that Bess was not that tightly wrapped mentally, and she was an extreme germ phobe.  I later learned that at lunch Bess would come with her food in sandwich bags.  She would take a fork, stab a piece of celery, or something, and then hold the the tined piece of food under running water for a few seconds and then put the food in her mouth.  She kept the tap running throughout her lunch.  

Apparently, one day Miss Myerson came into class and one of her second graders sneezed into a tissue, wadded it up, and put it into Miss Myerson’s hand.  I am told Miss Myerson screamed dropped the tissue and when running down the hall as if she were being pursued by a contract killer.

 

Why had this troubled woman come to see me?  Under our negotiated agreement employees and former employees had a right to purge their files of anything placed in their file by administration if it was three years old, or older. Miss Meyerson wanted to purge her file of the negative stuff since she had been off work for three years and one day as of our first meeting.

I contacted one of the assistant superintendents, explained what Miss Myerson wanted and set up a meeting for the three of us.  

One the day of the meeting Miss Myerson brought with her, to the meeting, a 30 quart black plastic trash bag.

We sat down.  Mr. Bill Withers, the assistant superintendent, sat down and placed Miss Myerson’s file on the table.  He was very gracious and calm in tone.  He opened the file and slowing looked at each page, noted the date on the document, if it was three years or older, he placed that document to the side.

Slowly we made our way through Miss Myerson’s entire personnel file.  

Just when I thought the meeting was wrapping up, Miss Myerson held open her black trash  bag and said, “Just put those papers in here.”

Mr. Withers made a face like he’d just taken a swig of spoiled milk.  “I can’t do that Miss Myerson.”

“The contract says I can have these documents removed.”

“Yes,” Withers agreed, “but it does not say I can just turn the documents over to you.  I will have the documents destroyed.”

“How do I know you won’t just put them all back in my file after we leave your office today?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t do that,” said Withers, “you have my word.”

“But I don’t trust you,” Miss Myerson said.  “I don’t trust anyone in administration here in Putnam City.”

“Well I cannot just hand these documents over to you,” Withers said.

“And I am not leaving without the documents,” Miss Myerson said.

It seemed that just like teacher contract negotiations was often at impasse that this little meeting with Miss Myerson was also at an impasse.

I came up with an idea.  I suggested that they allow me to take the documents right then, and I would tear the paper up into small pieces.  Then I would miss the torn pieces of paper up so that it was thoroughly mixed, then I would divide the paper fragments into two piles.  Withers would keep one pile, and Miss Myerson would keep the other pile.

The two parties agreed to that, and that is what we did.  I have to admit that I was thinking of King Solomon and that story where he offered to split a baby in half to give each putative mother one half of the baby they were claiming.  There is nothing new under the sun.

***

One year we went to impasse, and it was the second impasse I’d been through with the board’s negotiators.  Oklahoma was a Right to Work state.  We often called that a Right to Work for less.  The way the law was written, the board had to allow us to negotiate if we had a sufficiently large membership [51%], but if we could not come to an agreement, and if we went to impasse, the most we could hope for was for a Special Master to come in and attempt to draw the parties on to the same page.  If the Special Master could not get the two sides to voluntarily agree on salaries or other language in the contract then, well, the school board could just impose their will on the teachers and we had no recourse.

I’d already seen how the teachers just did not have the power to win in negotiations IF the school board dug its heels in.  That was when I came up with my theory of how to cope with a dictatorial school board.  I decided we had to make things so uncomfortable, and so embarrassing for the school board, the Superintendent and his administrative team that next year, if they were thinking about screwing the teachers again, maybe, just maybe, they would think, ‘do we really want to go through that mess again?  Maybe we should try to come to an agreement.’

The year of my last impasse I pulled out all the stops.  

We had the fliers with the home phone numbers of the school board members on it, and we put them out everywhere.  The Superintendent, Ralph Downes attended Bethany Nazarene Church.  One Sunday morning I took a team of teachers out to the Nazarene Church and we put those fliers under the windshields of all the cars in the church parking lot.

I leaked that we were putting out a bumper sticker that read:  Putnam City suffers from Downes Syndrome.  I never would have done anything like that, but I was OK with Ralph Downes thinking it might happen.  I made t-shirts and drew a picture of a classroom door open and children jammed into the classroom.  The words on the t-shirt read:  WE STACK THEM DEEP AND TEACH THEM CHEAP.

At the school board meeting where the Board was going to impose a contract on us, I had a jazz funeral.  I had someone make a black casket, the old fashioned kind like you’d see in the ole West.  I hired four guys from Bethany Nazarene to play music like you’d hear at a real New Orleans jazz funeral march.  The Warr Acres police were having their own contract negotiation disputes so they offered to lead our parade with police cars, “to keep us safe.”

We carried that casket around the block which required us to be on 39th Expressway for part of the trip, and we were doing this about rush hour.  One lane of 39th Expressway was blocked off.  The president of the state organization, the Oklahoma Education Association, showed up to speak to the crowd.  I spoke to the crowd.  I could see the administrators standing off a half block away watching this fiasco.  I stood on the casket to address the members who were there, and talked about how we were burying the board's respect for teachers this day when they were going to ignore us, refused to negotiate with us, and instead they were going to impose a contract on us that did not provide raises or working condition improvements.  The event was on all three television local news stations, it was covered in the Daily Oklahoman, and several radio stations covered the event.

The following school year we had very smooth negotiations, teachers got raises and the language regarding conditions improved.  The only power the teachers had was to make the experience so unpleasant for the school board  that they would not want to repeat that misery.  It seemed to work.

***

I remember once there was a sudden interest in cracking down on drugs.  The Reagan,  just say no, war on drugs was being waged across the country and Ralph Downes wanted to be apart of it.  In this same year when teachers did not even get their previously negotiated step raise, we found out that the school board had paid $46,000 to get a drug sniffing dog and handler that could sniff out drugs in the schools.

I drafted a document and sent it to Ralph Downes.  I asked in my letter if teachers personal property, their purses or cars were going to be a part of the dog’s duties?  I asked what would happen to students or teachers if the dog found drugs?

I got no reply.  

A week later I was at the school board meeting and I stood and voiced PCACT’s concerns about the drug sniffing dog.  I could not believe, in a year when teachers not no pay increases at all, that the school district was going to pay $46,000 for a drug dog.

In my newsletter I drew Mr. Downes with a box of puppies and a little boy asked how much were the puppies, and Mr. Downes say, “They’re $46,000 a piece.”

Again this was me, trying to make the school district leadership squirm because they had so completely disregarded the interests of the teachers.

In one school one of the science teachers thought they would “test” the system.  The teacher had some pure grain alcohol that was used in the chemistry labs.  The teacher put the grain alcohol in a locker, put a combination lock on the locker and left a note that said something like, “Just checking to see if the dog has any sniffing skills.”  

The dog did alert on the locker, the alcohol and the note were found.  The administration was steamed about this stunt.  I am not sure why, since the dog did what they were asking the dog to do.  At this stage in my life I prefer dogs to most people.  There was some talk of disciplining the teacher.  I told Mr. Downes that we would grieve such action.  Nothing happened.  This was just like many administrators, they started something complex and had not considered the ramifications nor had they prepared any policies to address matters that might pop up.

I went to one training where I was told about a district where the administration wanted to drug test bus drivers.  I had no objection to this since bus drivers are carting children about and it does not seem unreasonable to expect the bus drivers to be sober.  The school board in that district wanted to start with a voluntary program, and then make it mandatory the following year.

In the voluntary drug test, nine bus drivers tested positive for drugs, alcohol, or both drugs and alcohol.  When the drug positive drivers were interviewed they were, of course, asked why they volunteer for a drug test when they knew they would fail the test. The answers were varied, of course, but the general answer was that they knew they had a drug problem and thought being caught might get them the help they needed to stop using drugs, or getting drunk.  

The drug problem was off the lease during the 1960s, and alcohol has been the number one drug problem for the world for a long, long time, perhaps for all time.  It was under the Reagan Administration that there was a cultural and governmental war declared on drugs.  The results were that a lot of drug users were given stiff prison sentences, and the money makers of the illicit drug business were rarely held accountable.  Many CEOs of the drug business were not even known to those who declared war on their product.

***

I was contacted one day by a company that did mobile mammograms.  They wanted to provide their services for a fixed sum of money, and they took our health insurance.  I talked to the Head Shed people at the Administrative Offices and got their OK.

I started promoting this with our membership through my newsletter, and I put a funny declarative sentence on all the posters and newsletter blurbs that I wrote:

LET PCACT BE YOUR BOSOM BUDDY.

It turns out, when I was elected President, I really liked contract negotiations, grievance processing, writing the newsletter, and visiting the schools and talking with members.  It was the first job I felt I did well.  If you knew me at all you would know that for me to suggest I did something well is, well, HUGE for me.  

I was elected for a second term, but I found myself with a clash of emotions.  I was terrified to go back into the classroom, but I was term limited as the Association President, and, to be honest, as much as I liked the job, I believed it was better for the Association for new people to take on the leadership.

My second emotion was about my family.  I had a little boy and a wife that I loved, and we were living in a dump.  I saw an opportunity for me to stay out of the classroom and earn more money.  I applied for an opening with the Oklahoma Education Association, which would also make me a UniServ Director paid in part by the National Education Association.

I thought I could earn more money, I would be in a better position to provide good things for my wife and son, and I would continue to do some of the same stuff I did as a teacher union president.

I applied.  My previous OEA organizer was Laila Odom and she had been promoted to the position that hired union organizers, which did not hurt my chances.

Long story, short, I was hired.  There were several positions close to PCACT including the position that would have made me the UniServ Director for the district where I’d served as President for the past two years.

Lela didn’t think it was a good idea for me to be the union guy for the same district where I’d been President.  Lela had just pushed out a UniServ Director who’d been working with the Tulsa Classroom Teachers Association, and she felt I would be the best choice to go there.

This is the place where I started making very selfish and foolish choices for myself and my family.  

I took the job.  That meant that Ryan had to change schools.  He’d just started first grade and I was making him move to Tulsa and change schools.  Why did I do that?  If I could point to one thing I hated about my childhood was how frequently we moved.  We moved a crazy number of times.  I never had friends that I knew longer than a year.  I was always the new kid.  I never knew what to expect and there was confusion, and danger, and pain that followed me from house to school to new house to new school.  

Now why was I doing the same thing to Ryan.  When we moved out of the log house, in Wewoka, the last thing Ryan did before leaving the house was go over, kiss on of the logs and he said in his sweet fiver year old’s voice, “Goodbye house.”

The thing is, I was so selfish, I didn’t even think about what I was doing.  I didn’t hurt Ryan on purpose, I hurt him without thinking about it, and it was a sin that I should have thought about.

And I was doing something similar to my wife Kathie.  I did not realize at this point in our lives that Kathie was such a frightened person.  Kathie had been protected to an extreme degree.  Kathie had lived in two houses when I met her.  At this point in our married life I had already moved her eight times.  For a person who is super sensitive to stress eight moves was way too many moves.  Now I was insisting that we move a 9th time, and this time it was to Tulsa.  Tulsa is a long drive to her mother and father’s house.  

The old saying, “Happy Wife/Happy Life” was not what I was doing.

I was so afraid that IF I returned to the classroom the Putnam City people would target me, hassle me, and eventually fire me.  I had a crisis of imagination.  I could not imagine what else I could do to earn money.  I thought I had two choices only:  teaching, or the Executive Director of the Tulsa Classroom Teacher’s Association.

I wonder how our life would have been different had I not drug my family off to Tulsa.  It is what 65 year old guys do:  they rehearse their regrets.